1946
Eureka (USA)
Custom professional coaches on the S&S label
 
Fleetwood (USA)
Fleetwood Series 75 sedans and limousines like these
were used frequently by funeral homes around the country
Hess & Eisenhardt (USA) 8-door airport limousine featuring a roof line unique to
these vehicles. They were also built in shorter, 6-door versions. A number of the
8-door versions were built with rollback canvas center roof sections (as below) for the
Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado.
 
Meteor (USA)
Miller (USA)
Schwartz (USA) 6-door
"Woodie", movie studio station wagon, McC p.268
 
Superior (USA) various commercial vehicles
on Cadillac chassis for the ambulance and funeral trades,like the survivor below:
 
  
[Unidentified, USA] Professional cars on
1946 commercial Cadillac chassi
 
[Unidentified, USA] Ambulance on 1946
Cadillac chassis
[Unknown, USA] Series 62 on 129"
wheel base converted for railroad track inspection (SS 4/92, pp.7-8)
1947
Derham (USA) Custom limousines, including
this one, presumably built for the funeral trade. It has, in addition to faux landau
bars [an unusual feature for a Derham conversion], the typical front hood chrome markings
of the Sayers & Scovill (S&S) funeral coaches.
 
 
[ Photos: Internet, 11/2004 ]
Eureka (USA) Professional cars on Cadillac
chassis, like the example below
Chieftain ambulance
Chieftain hearse
Eureka Chieftain funeral car
Hess & Eisenhardt (USA) Airport bus
Could this be a survivor ?
Miller (USA) Various commercial body
styles such as this ambulance
 
This one has seen better days!
Sayers & Scovill [S&S] (USA)
Various commercial body styles such as this ornate carved hearse.
Sayers & Scovill (S&S) Macedonian
carved side funeral coach
Sayers & Scovill (S&S) ambulance
 
As you can see, this one (above 2 rows) was converted
to a low-rider
[ Photos: Self-Starter, courtesy Roy Schneider ]
Photo: Internet, 2014
Superior Coach Corporation (USA) Various
commercial bodies including hearses like the model in the photo, below
Factory drawing (above) and survivor (below)
This hearse features the automatic side-servicing
table with Lev-o-Trol
 
 
[Above two rows] The photos of this beautiful
survivor were found on the Internet, 2/2001
Superior Cadillac ambulance
Superior Cadillac combination ambulance
Superior Cadillac Landaulet hearse
Superior Coach Corporation (USA) Other
commercial bodies including the airport limousine, below, on a stretched Cadillac
commercial chassis.
Superior field ambulance
Unknown (France) Funeral car
on Cadillac chassis
 
Unknown (France) Conversion
of a 1947 Series 62 convertible into a movie camera-car. Information and photos
here are borrowed from France's NITRO Magazine issue for Oct-Nov, 2003 (I met the
editor, Claude Lefebvre, at an international Cadillac meet in Castelsarrasin, France, in
the early nineties). The original car was owned by Jean Gabin, one of France's "movie
giants" of the forties through the seventies. It was acquired by Loca-Films,
a French movie company. After the conversion, all that remained of the original car were
the engine and steering position, which was protected from the wind behind the cockpit
door of a 3-wheeler Isetta-Velam scooter-car. Work platforms were mounted
over the engine and across the rear deck; additional platforms could be mounted outboard
of the front and rear bumper. In normal operating mode, the vehicle was more than 26 feet
long; when front and rear platforms were added it grew to almost 40 feet! Movie crews
could move easily from one end of the vehicle to the other without having to get off.
Towards the end of the fifties, Loca-Films owned this vehicle, as well as a converted 1950 Limousine, two Fords from 1950
and 1956, a converted 1954 Fleetwood 75 converted to
a pick-up truck and, later, a converted 1967
Eldorado coupe. Sadly, only the latter has survived and has
clocked up over 800,000 miles in 30 years.
 
All that remains of Jean Gabin's 1947 Cadillac
convertible is the engine and the steering controls; film-maker Bernard Château (right)
stands on the rig; the cockpit door of an Isetta-Velam
scooter-car serves as a wind screen; Bernard's company went bankrupt and the vehicle
was seized but he was soon back in business with a converted 1955 Eldorado
 
It was not uncommon to have 8-10 camera crew members
aboard the vehicle at one time
 
Above row: shots from a Michel Deville movie from
1963
[ All photos: © NITRO Magazine ]
Unknown (probably USA) An airport
limousine or "bus" built on a stretched Cadillac commercial chassis. Bernie
DeWinter, who is an expert on these commercial vehicles, believes it to be a regular
stretched limousine from Hess & Eisenhardt.
 
Could the survivor, center and right be the selfsame
vehicle as the one on the left?
Unknown (probably USA)
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